"Anyone can come here on any day of the week and leave feeling satisfied, whatever his or her taste in music."

That's Charles B. Ancheta's pledge to patrons of the American Music Theatre in Lancaster, Pa., where Ancheta, '97 music performance, is music director. The 1,600-seat theater in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country specializes in musical revues that run the gamut from classical to country, pop, Broadway, and rock'n'roll.

"This is a great experience working with great talent, and it's a lot of fun," said Ancheta, who writes all the musical arrangements, conducts the theater's eight-piece orchestra, plays the piano, and sings.

The theater stages up to three different original shows per year with titles like One Voice, a gospel revue; The Revue '05, offering a smorgasbord of musical styles; and AMT Christmas '05, a yuletide extravaganza.

Ancheta occasionally performs on the piano elsewhere, as he did when he played West Side Story at the Gateway Playhouse on Long Island. He also composes music. In 2003 he recorded a CD, Inspirational Piano Music, a compilation of 10 favorite hymns, and he was an arranger and co-producer of Broadway, a CD of show tunes recorded by friend and veteran Broadway singer and dancer Andrea McCormick.

Ancheta credits USC music professor John Kenneth Adams with helping him define his voice as a musician and USC's late opera director Talmage Fauntleroy, who invited him to accompany the Studio Lirico Opera in Italy and deepened Ancheta's appreciation of musical theater.

After USC, Ancheta received a master of arts degree with honors at the University of Western Sydney, Australia, under a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship and was named a Rotary Paul Harris Fellow. Before joining the American Music Theatre, he was musical director of the Dock Street Theatre in Charleston and associate conductor and keyboardist with the Man of La Mancha national tour, starring Jack Jones.

"I've enjoyed so much having a career as a musician and being able to make a living doing what I love to do," Ancheta said. While a Carolina Scholar at USC, Ancheta said, "I was on my way to doing everything I wanted to do."